One of the most important skills you can have on a long road trip is just not getting bored, especially for those three or four-hour stretches of highway. We’ve come up with a lot of ways to pass the time, but one of our favorite standbys is waving at the cars driving alongside us. It’s always fun to see what reactions we get, and how those change from region to region.

For the first stretch of the trip, most of the reactions we got were pretty positive. People tended stare at us, goggle-eyed for a moment, and then, when they saw us waving, wave right back. Truckers would honk approvingly or flash the peace sign, occasionally even yelling words of encouragement at us. After a while of this, we started to make a game of seeing who could get the most positive reactions. Sometimes one of us would luck out and get a smile and a wave from a pretty girl–after a few days on a big, smelly bus with five other dudes, you start to treasure even the briefest of interactions with the opposite sex.

Unfortunately, as of late, the other folks on the road have been getting less friendly. I guess I can’t totally blame them; it’s not terribly surprising that a lot of people would be put off by the sudden appearance of a giant hippie bus in their rearview mirrors. I guess that when you’re confronted with something that bizarre, scowling and staring straight ahead is as good an option as any.

But outright aggressive behavior makes a lot less sense. I can get why someone might want to ignore us, but who the hell reacts to a friendly wave by flipping you off?

So far, only the one guy. And of course, he flipped us off while we were going down Jerry Falwell Parkway, in Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Falwell’s Liberty University. I flatter myself by imagining that Jerry Falwell would have given us the middle finger too.